I suppose, in the end analysis, I am not a Trekkie…

I saw the new Star Trek movie Saturday, and it was a decent, fun movie, just so long as you didn’t sweat the details (black holes and supernovae don’t quite work like that) and did not try to compare it to the Great Bird’s original works.  But ultimately, it was a forgettable movie, because it was just “a tale…full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”  It was only trying to be an enjoyable but disposable science-fiction flavored actiony popcorn movie, and it succeeded; it was not trying to be anything more than that, and in this regard, it also succeeded.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

So…We went out and watch X-Men Origins: Wolverine Saturday. I have to say that over all I like it better than the other three X-men movies. I’m not sure why exactly. I guess it’s because the other movies deveated too much from what I remember of the X-men. Granted I’m no expert on the X-Men, in fact my knowledge is somewhat limited. This latest movie just seemed to make more sence to me than the others. Though I’m still trying to figure out how he survied a cannon shot at basicaly point blank range before he had the adamantium. I mean he would have been blown to bits and that’s not even an exageration. The biggest peice of him could probably fit in a shoe box. I guess it just depends on what he can regenetate back from, I’ve seen in one comic him coming have from just being a skeleton.

All the nit picking aside I really liked this move. I just wish they would go back and tell the story of him growing up and then living in the early to mid 1900’s.

What do you think, want’a see a Deadpool movie?

What?

Predictions? Okay, 3, 2, 1, Let’s Jam!

20th Century Fox is working on making a live-action motion picture adaption of Cowboy Bebop, with Keanu Reeves cast as Spike Spiegel.

How do I think this will turn out?  Here are my predictions, some serious, some not, numbered for no particular reason, as they are listed in no particular order:

Message Movie − Message = ?

Really, what do you have when you take the message out of a message movie?

Some spoilers follow (like a movie based on a sixty-eight-year-old story can be spoiled, but just in case, you have been warned…)

I saw The Day the Earth Stood Still yesterday, and I was less than impressed.  There was the requisite quota of eye-candy special effects, but not much else.  The story: Klaatu comes to Earth to decide whether or not humanity needs to be eliminated to preserve Earth’s ecosystem, decides humanity’s got to go, Gort starts eliminating everything, then Klaatu changes his mind, stops Gort, and leaves, the end.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

The first three X-Men movies were good: there was some great acting (Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan stand out in my mind), enjoyably over-the-top action sequences (most of which involved Wolverine), and social commentary that was no more anvilicious than necessary (the minority-rights themes, especially). Oh, and I liked the way Magneto, one of the major villainous-types, is portrayed, not merely as a gratuitously evil-for-evil’s-sake Chaotic Evil caricature, but an individual who actually has something of an understandable reason why he’s doing what he’s doing.

In any case, I’m looking forward to this new X-Men movie, due out on May 1st. I’m just glad that it is going to have Gambit in it, not because I know anything about the character, but just so that the “THEY SHUD HAEV GAMBIT INSTEAD OF WOLFERINE! WOLFEREEN SUCKS!!!!!1!” fanboys can chill.

One Giant Leap for a Shōjo

Time travel is one of those subsets of science fiction that is just fun to think about; indeed, there have been great works built around variants of the concept (think police boxes and DeLoreans). There have also been some that were…not so great (the names of which are withheld to protect the guilty). Fortunately, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time is more the former than the latter.

Makoto is a slightly tomboyish high schooler who has a really bad day—almost late to school, bombs the pop quiz, sets fire to the home ec classroom, the brakes on her bicycle go out, and she gets hit by a train. We’ve all had days like this, but fortunately for Makoto, she picked up the ability to go back in time somewhere. Like most people who suddenly have the ability to travel through time thrust upon them, Makoto wastes no time wasting time travel on reclaiming the pudding her sister ate the day before and staging a ten-hour-long karaoke marathon.

She realizes that it’s not all fun and games when she starts hurting people, indirectly and directly, with her manipulation of time. Of course fixing the things she messed up isn’t that easy, and when Makoto’s time travel powers run out of juice, she finds out that her actions have ultimately led one of her best friends and a classmate into a rendezvous with the train that would have killed her…

One of the few quibbles I have with this movie is that…ooh, I almost said something truly spoileriffic. Okay, let me just say that the motivations of one of the characters is not very well developed, in my opinion. This person is engaged in a significant course of action and the reason why isn’t very well explained. Other than that, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time is a great movie, a solid A in my book. Interesting characters, good plot, nice art style, great movie.

Why? Why Why Why Why Why?

There was a time when I called myself a Trekkie without reservation.  I watched it on TV.  I saw the movies.  I read the novels.  I bought the technical manuals.  FASA’s roleplaying game was my gateway drug into the hobby.  I even tried my hand at writing my own fan fiction…more than once.  Star Trek was awesome.  The original series?  Awesome.  The Next Generation?  Awesomer.

Deep Space Nine…not so much so.  It wasn’t a bad show, in my opinion, but it wasn’t Star Trek, not really.  Whatever happened to the boldly going?  Nah, take all the strange new worlds and new life and new civilizations, toss it, and give us a run-of-the-mill science fiction-ish war story with the occassional Klingon.  Oh, they had a little of the Trek flavor, but it was diluted, like a cup of Earl Grey poured into a tall glass of Lipton, topped off with a couple ice cubes.

I didn’t see much of Voyager, but it seemed to be heading back in the right direction…kind of.  They were exploring worlds of sufficient newness and strangeness, but then again, they weren’t doing it willingly.  It was more like, “Well, we took a wrong turn at Qo’noS, and we’re terribly lost, so we might as well admire the scenery while we try desperately to get back to Federation space.”  This is not what I consider “boldly going.”

Enterprise I will not comment upon.

I think the problem was that when Gene Roddenberry died, his vision—the core ideas that made Star Trek awesome—died with him.  The bigwigs at Paramount decided that quantity was vastly more important than quality.  People loved Star Trek, so why not give them more?  And more?  And more?  Why not keep stuffing them full of Star Trek until they’re sick of it?  Makes perfect sense to me.

And this brings me to today’s embedded video, a trailer of the new Star Trek movie that’s coming out…oh, sometime or another.  Movie trailers are supposed to make you excited about the movie, not leave you shaking your head, asking Why? over and over again.

I hope I’m wrong about this one. I really, really hope I’m wrong, because this movie looks like it’s going to suck mugato balls.

EDIT: Originally, I found this trailer over at Trailer Addict, but WordPress wouldn’t let me embed it for some odd reason, so I had to resort to the ol’ tried and true YouTube.

Cowabunga, Dude

NOT BASED ON ACTUAL EVENTS, I SWEAR

Ghost in the Shell + DreamWorks << Ghost in the Shell

Five months after Variety runs the article, I read that DreamWorks has secured rights to Masamune Shirow’s Ghost in the Shell manga, and intends on adapting it into a 3D live-action film.  To quote Han Solo, “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

I’m a GitS fanboy.  I’ve read the original manga, and Man/Machine Interface, and Human-Error Processor, and The Lost Memory, Revenge of the Cold Machines, and White Maze novels.  I’ve seen the Ghost in the Shell movie, and its sequel, Innocence.  I’ve watched Stand Alone Complex, SAC 2nd Gig, and Solid State Society more times than I probably should mention.  This is not to say I am in any way special—my point is merely that I am fairly familiar with the original work and its direct descendants.

A significant part of what I enjoy about Japanese anime, manga, and film is the cultural differences in storytelling.  Take for example Kurosawa Akira’s Seven Samurai and its American remake, John Sturges’ The Magnificent Seven.  The story in both is essentially the same: farmers are harrassed by bandits, and decide to hire warriors on the cheap to defend them, seven warriors are recruited and proceed to train the villagers to defend themselves, there is a romance subplot involving the least experienced warrior and one of the village girls, there is a climatic battle against the bandits, and ultimately only three of the seven warriors survive.